Digital Outback Photography has published the Lightroom 4 Artistry: Develop by Bettina and Uwe Steinmueller. The 90-page e-book comes in the form of a printable PDF and covers the tools in the Develop module of the latest version of Lightroom. This includes a look at the Highlights and Shadows tools introduced with Adobe's 'Process Version 2012.' The e-book is available directly from the company at a discounted introductory price of $16.95.

Press Release

Lightroom 4 Artistry: Develop

Using the Develop Module for Color Images

Get the optimal image quality out of Lightroom 4 Develop (color images)

Comments

Even if I thought a book on the develop module was necessary, I'd have to chime in to say that I agree with those who say it's overpriced for an eBook and with those who say that it's not even a real eBook.

Man, I can't believe these comments. People actually believe that expert information sort of magically appears in a coherent series of sentences and pictures and lays itself out in pages.

You know what folks? You all rip off the public too. Everyone knows it costs nothing to press that shutter button, bandwidth and storage are cheap. No one prints on paper anymore, so you aren't paying for that. Or for film or chemicals. Digital photos are free. Digital distribution is cheap. Cameras are priced for everyone now, and the cheap cameras are so smart and automatic! With all that technology, what "work" are you scammer photographers falsely charging for, anyway? Lower your prices!

Just as you all demand that Steinmuller not charge $16.95 for an ebook, it is then reasonable to demand that you never charge anyone for another photograph for as long as you live, or at least, not over $5. I mean really, $5 per photo is already highway robbery as it is, right?

I don't get the whining about the price.Sure, the additional content should better be included. Sure, a PDF is maybe not the best way to do it.

BUT: What costs is the time necessary to CREATE an WRITE the content. To think about how to structure the tutorial, to write it, take the screenshots, read through it again and again to make sure everything is clear, etc, etc.

Furthermore, they have some information on their site for free. Creating that content needs time too. Time nobody pays for, but they still have to pay their bills.

If you think the price is too low: Fine, don't buy it, but stop complaining.Or even better: Go on and write stuff like this on your own and see if it's really that easily done.

Astonishing that so many posters have wasted their time whining about the price and offering a half baked critique of the evil of the pdf format.

If anything rather than ban reference to this product, why don't the moderators take the brave step of banning any further comments on this product unless someone has actually purchased and critiqued the ebook itself ?

I think many dpr viewers are sick to death of listening to people whinge, off the topic.

Don't quite understand the hostility around pricing of e-books. Regardless of the format it comes on, the question should be: is this content worth $16.95 to me?

For me - that does feel high for an unknown. If David DuChemin printed a ebook on a subject of interest to me - I'd probably pay that $17. I have 3 of his books and I find he covers a different perspective than most lead by Scott Kelby, who also is a known commodity to me. Others print books that are basically rehashed manuals with almost no added value. One of the first LR4 books out there was in that category.

I agree with PhotonCanvas. I have and recommend other books by Uwe Steinmueller and even some DOP Photoshop scripts. Eg Digital Workflow Handbook published by RockyNook. That book, however, is 527 useful pages for $22 (PDF), a bit more for hardback paper. PDFs? Why not. Save some trees.

I agree the price of this book is way too high. BUT there are other eBooks out there at this price and more - are people saying that $17 is too much for anything?What about Scott Kelby's and Martin Evening's comprehensive volumes, which are around £18.95 and £20.75 on the UK Kindle store? Worth the money, or overpriced as they are only about £10 less than the printed versions, so save all the printing, distribution costs etc. (except Amazone's costs)?

Fellow DPreviewers lets not be so negative. The price is higher then I would comfortably pay especially being that I already have the Luminous-Landscape stuff. But if this is what they want to ask so be it. Let's not discourage other creators from asking what they think something is worth. And if the market doesn't respond by buying it, then they will eventually lower the price.

Sorry for yet another negative post, but I agree with the others. Real books cost money to print and distribute, the distributors and retailers have to make a profit, and all those remaindered books cost money too. But a PDF costs practically nothing. And this one is a measly 90 pages, on a subject that requires very little investment from the authors. At a generous one hour per page that's just two weeks work.

And if you want the images to practice on, you have to pay even more!!

Yeah I know, write one yourself and see whether it's easy or not... :-)

This trend of 'publishing' how-to books (for nearly every micro-update) for digital photography is quite the scam. There's more than enough free or nearly free training and instruction online to dive into these applications. If you want serious in-depth training, use a video training series (as others have mentioned).

Looked for the iPad at iPhoto, which costs around $5. The reviews for it were not good, but the advice manuals almost all over $5. I bought it, and found its help system excellent. The help guides are extortion IMO. And I suspect this publication is in the same category.

But ... why the heck doesn't Adobe publish a proper manual?Or don't they know about publishing?

A PDF is NOT an ebook, it is merely a crappy, bloated, outdated, non-reflowable format developed by Adobe nearly a quarter of a century ago. PDFs are nearly useless. They are best viewed on a large computer monitor, but are terrible when viewed on ebook readers and tablets. I have to agree that $17 is totally too much for a piddly 90 pages, especially since they are publishing it in such an antiquated and useless format!